The Internet And The Damage Done by Perri Prinz

Today, as I watch the next round of stupid accusations being set up against The Furry Raiders, and I see them hoping I’ll be at the ready to explain why they have nothing to do with what they’re being accused of, I think there’s something else I need to write about first.

I need to write about the state of the internet at this moment in time and how the common modern mindset absorbs information and produces opinions. Because, if any of my readers are working with the logic that was standard 10, 20, 30 years ago, odds are you’re not going to believe any of the stuff I see happening is real. I find it hard to accept myself. But I can’t deny it because I’m in the middle of it, and thus not in a position to look away from it.

First of all, here is a new law to add to your internet memes. “Everyone on the internet is stupid.” Seriously, if you partake of social media in any way, you have exposed your mind to a disease that has infected your brain and impaired your rationality. It has totally exempted you from any standards of logic that are recognized in the real world, and you are now seeing everything through a filter of popular opinion generated by peers.

It’s like that old adage, if something is repeated enough, you’ll start to believe it. And even if what you’re starting to believe is the most irrational BS, for which there is not a shred of credible evidence, you will begin to see it as your reality.

These days I am constantly inundated with posts to the effect that “Trump is an idiot, Trump is going to ruin the country, Trump is going to blow up the world. Be frightened. Be very, very frightened.” Seriously, it’s a slow day if I don’t get linked at least 20 articles about some new thing Trump has done that was either stupid or dangerous. Under the circumstances, how could anyone come away from their computer not being scared to death that life as we knew it is over, and we need to blame Trump for it?

Well, in regards to that, I’ve good news and some bad news. The good news is we don’t need to blame Trump for the bad news, which is that the world as we knew it has already come to an end. We have arrived in the future, and it’s every bit as horrible as Orwell and Huxley anticipated. It just took us a little longer to get here than they expected.

But, no, Trump is not responsible for that. Trump is merely a product of it. Trump has his nose constantly in social media, and thus is just as infected with this common sense destroying virus as everyone else.

For example, we know that Trump listens to Alex Jones. In my early days on the internet, around the turn of the century, I had friends in Anime Fandom who swore by the likes of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh. And so they had me reading all these articles about impending totalitarian takeovers of America, storm troopers marching through the streets culling the population down to desired figures. And of course there was also the global warming thing, impending race wars, and all kinds of fear inducing stuff like that driving people out of their minds with terror, even before 9/11.

Truly, the world that I knew ended with the passing of the 20th century, because it was in December of 1999 that I got my first computer and ventured into the very different world of the internet, where logic and reason were kicked to the curb, because it is opinions that rule the internet mindset, and it is fear that drives opinions.

Websites do not adhere to the concept of freedom of speech. On the internet, every site is a privately owned mini dictatorship where the opinions of the site owners are law. And if you don’t support their opinions, they kick you out, which seriously rubbed my 20th century mindset the wrong way, and still does to this day.

Free exchanges of ideas can not happen on the internet. You can not come into any one place with an alternative view to express and not be instantly hated, mocked, trolled and finally banned. And anyone who dares support your alternative view, they’re out too.

And this happens everywhere on the net, from Progressive Rock forums to Furry news sites to Atheist forums to alternative news sites on up to The White House itself. Anywhere you go there is only one opinion being listened to and acted upon, which nothing contrary is allowed to disturb.

And that is why, after 20 years of this, we have all been rendered stupid, because the inaccessibility of contrary ideas, which others make sure we either can not hear or have reason not to take seriously, has completely destroyed the logic process, which depends on being able to weigh the evidence of both sides, as well as to be able to think independently of a group.

Unfortunately, everyone now partaking of social media is in some kind of group. And that group is controlling their thinking. That group is inflicting the stupidity of the small minds that rule it on everyone, indoctrinating them to believe as the site owners believe, and being ridiculously successful at it, even if the ideas they’re impressing on you are so illogical as to assert that a group filled with infinitely diverse members of all races and disciplines of thought is a Nazi group.

See, if you are not running for the hills at the instant of hearing such nonsense, which is worthy of Louis Carroll, but instead you find yourself thinking, “Well, this person surely knows more about this stuff than I do. Maybe there is a way a Nazi could be a Furry, and gay, and in a relationship with a black man . . . Oh well, whatever. Everyone in this group is calling them Nazis, and I don’t want to support Nazis. So I’d better start hating these people, along with anyone who takes their side.” That’s a pretty good demonstration of how to be really, really stupid.

And as I look around me today, watching Deo Taz Devil and Patch Packrat set up their new gambit to reinforce hatred of The Furry Raiders, I realize that is what I’m up against; an internet brimming over with fools who will take any lies, no matter how ridiculous, into the core of their being, just because they saw it in print on some site that they can not conceive of having a reason to lie, or even a possibility of being misinformed.

Thus, in this digital world of unreality, any lie once printed and distributed becomes established fact in the minds of the majority of the populace, and to tell them that these people they’re hating on were never Nazis is about as likely to be accepted as telling a Christian Jesus never existed. And right now people are hoping that I can write up a storm that will counter this phenomenon of universal internet stupidity. Of which I’ve got about as much chance as I do of stopping Muslims from killing gays.

Of course, that brings up another interesting point, because I only have the word of some questionable people in the news industry that Muslims kill gays, abuse women, create a crime problem and any number of other things people incessantly throw at me to get me to start hating Muslims. Even for me the question of whether I should buy this hatred is a tough call. The only thing that really stops me from buying it is it’s kind of hard to picture Cat Stevens throwing a gay person off a roof.

But even so, I’m aware that this and any other hatred, or belief actively being pitched at me on the internet, is coming from snake oil salesmen with an agenda I probably don’t know anything about. Thus I make it a policy to just not buy hate, ever. I don’t care how good the salesman is. And even if they do eventually try to sell me someone who is actually worth hating, it’s better to not hate someone who deserves to be hated than to be tricked into hating somebody who doesn’t deserve it.

That, of course, is 20th century thinking. I don’t expect it will make a lot of sense to any Millennials reading this. But, if you’re a Millennial, and what I just said seemed an idea worth considering, hallelujah, there’s hope for the world yet.

Then again, I only have the word of certain groups that Millennials are as terrible as they’re made out to be. Propaganda would have me believe they’re all pretty much retarded. I’m wary of that too. I’m wary of any stereotype.

I’m even wary of Antifa stereotypes, if just to show I’m an equal opportunity distributor of benefit of the doubt. Are they all Commie anarchists, or is someone just paying them to put on a good show? It’s good to remember that I do not know these things, and anyone who tells me otherwise doesn’t know either. It’s just his opinion. And there is no law that says I have to always go with popular opinion.

Also, the group I find myself in at this point is pretty extreme in it’s contempt for Trump. In this circle, to voice support for Trump would be to apply an automatic label of stupidity to one’s self, and to invite a lot of hostilities. The same could be said of Social Justice Warriors. The people I spend most of my time with just hate their guts and don’t want to hear anything nice about them.

Not that I could tell you anything nice about Trump or Social Justice Warriors, because I’d have to venture outside of my circle to hear anything good about them, which I used to attempt to do in the early years when I didn’t know better.

I used to try sitting on the fence between the Atheists and the Christians, trying to find a place of balance between the two, because I don’t fully agree with either of them. But both sides just hate people who sit on the fence. They both feel that if you’re not completely with them, you must be against them. And if they can’t rope you in and indoctrinate you, they treat you as the enemy and persecute you with trolling until you just give up and go away, realizing that both sides are wrong, and the issue itself never held any consequence at all.

Most such disputes on the internet are equally inconsequential. If you’re able to maintain any semblance of being a free thinker through all the idiocy that’s constantly impressed upon you, you eventually begin to see that no extremist view can ever be right. It becomes a test you give yourself. “Is my view extreme? Then my view must be wrong.”

So now we have all these Alt-Right/Alt-Furry people vs. the Antifa/SJW’s, all trying to get at the absolute extremes of their right and left positions. And, of course, they’re all wrong; every last single one of them.

You would think that sensible people would realize that if the extremes of the left and right are Communism and Nazism, folks shouldn’t need a lot of encouragement to realize they don’t want to go there. But if you’re in the extreme left group, “Communism Is Good” is the only song you’ll be allowed to hear. And the big hit on the right will be “When The Nazis Come Marching Home.” And here I am again, sitting on the fence, getting this stupidity in full glorious hi-fi stereo, and not being allowed to say a word to either group of nut-bars.

Believe it or not, I’m not alone here on the fence. You know who’s sitting here with me? Foxler and The Furry Raiders, who, like Trump, get a gratuitous amount of press to the effect that they are the evil Nazis you’re supposed to hate, which is mainly coming from the extreme left, who are Communists who expect you for some reason not to hate them, while they continually try to stoke your hatred of Nazis.

Now let’s think about that for a minute. Why should we hate Nazis? The reason commonly offered is that they killed 6 million people. Boggles the mind to conceive it, doesn’t it? And yet, Communists killed 10 million people, but they’re somehow not as bad as Nazis and we shouldn’t hate them. We should want to join them, give them power over us, so they can save us from those horrible Nazis. And afterwards we can enjoy their tender mercies.

I think it was Danny Kaye who said, “That’s like giving all your food to a cat to keep a mouse out of your food.”

Meanwhile, we’re just sitting here on the fence, not wanting to be Nazis or Communists, because we’re Furries. And lets face it, nothing to the extreme left or right wants anything to do with Furries and their all inclusive ideas about freedom of expression. This “Be as nice as you possibly can to everybody” stuff just will never fly in extremist airspace.

So you might well ask, “What about those armbands? Don’t they imply identification with the extreme right?” Actually, quite the contrary. The paw print represents Furry Pride, being proud to be a Furry. And what is there to be proud of in being a Furry?

Furries are generally centerists as a community. We sit in the middle, draw people in from all sides, and do our damnedest not to judge. Because, if you’re a fellow Furry, that’s all we care about, and we want to be able to hang out with you. And when outside forces that have nothing to do with Furry are not mucking things up by encouraging rampant hatred and mistrust, we make a nice community that’s kind of worth being proud of.

But then you might say, “The paw print is all well and good. But why have it on an armband? Why not just put it on a jacket and avoid all this controversy?”

At this point, it wouldn’t make any difference. They could drop the logo all together, and the unreasoning hate would continue from all sides, because you’ve all heard it repeated so often that these people are Nazis that nothing is going to kick that cultishly indoctrinated idea from your minds. The internet has jammed it into the core of your beliefs, and the prospect of losing a core belief is terrifying. It puts you in fight for your life mode, as the scientists attest.

If you have accepted the belief that 2 Gryphon, The Furry Raiders and anyone else you’ve been told to hate is a Nazi, to lose that belief would leave you feeling a most devastated fool; the emperor in his final realization that he’s been running around naked; taken to the cleaners, if you will. And all it cost you was your freedom, your ability to live in harmony with your neighbors, a century of progress, and the last vestige of your ability to think for yourself.

Thus, giving up the armbands would serve no purpose, other than to give the Communists some illusion of a victory won over Nazis who never were Nazis. So The Raiders might as well be stuck with the armbands, but that’s ok, because you’ve got the real Nazi armband on the far right, and the Communist armband on the far left. And right smack dab in the middle you’ve got the armband of Furry Fandom giving the finger to the other two.

It makes a bold statement that we are neither Nazis or Communists, and we refuse, on pain of all the suffering you can inflict upon us, to be forced to choose to be one or the other. Both are disgusting beyond measure, and we do not need them, because we’ve build something better here.

We are Furries. We built the community were diversity, inclusiveness and freedom of expression are the norm, enabling all furs to proudly be themselves. We need no Social Justice Warriors here because we have already achieved social justice in as pure a form as anyone has ever achieved it, for in our community all furs are furs, and nothing more matters.

But then you might say, “That’s BS. The Furry Community is not utopia. All people ever do here is fight.” This is true. Indeed, we wouldn’t be in this situation now if Furries weren’t the most self justified bunch of pricks and bitches this world has ever seen.

Just like The United States, The Furry Community is a magnificent concept depending on the people to want to live by it with the good of all in mind. But nobody wants to think about anyone but themselves. So maybe it can’t work if the people don’t have enough sense in their heads even to value it.

Maybe Foxler and The Raiders are fools to be put through hell for their dream. But do you think living in a Communist or Nazi community would be any less hell? Do you think you would even dare have a dream living under such extremes?

In a world that is nothing but pain and struggle, is it not most important to preserve a place where one can dream of something better, something they’d rather be, something that gives them at least the illusion of a peaceful place to escape where they can be free to show what they hide inside, and be loved for it?

No, there are no illusions that The Furry Community is utopia. But even so, it was a pretty damn good start at one before these political interlopers tried to break it up with their Communist flags and talk of Nazis where none existed; before we fell for their spiel and bought our new set of clothes that exposed our gullibility to the world.

And if this damage can never be undone, and The Furry Community should never recover from the hatred that has been injected into it, that gives a whole other meaning to The Raiders armbands. In mourning for that which was and could have been; the dream that was never allowed a chance to prove itself.